Despite the thousands of books published on the American Civil War, one aspect that has never received the in-depth attention it deserves is the use of landmines and their effect on the war and beyond. Kenneth R. Rutherford rectifies this oversight with America’s Buried History: Landmines in the Civil War, the first book devoted to a comprehensive analysis and history of the fascinating and important topic of landmines. Modern mechanically fused high explosive and victim-activated landmines were used for the first time in the world’s history on a widespread basis in the American Civil War. The first American to die from a victim-activated landmine was on the Virginia peninsula in early 1862 during the siege of Yorktown. The controversial weapon, which was concealed on or beneath the ground, was built for one purpose: to kill or maim enemy troops. The weapon was the brainchild of Confederate General Gabriel J. Rains, who had experimented with explosive booby traps in Florida two decades earlier during the Seminole Wars. By the end of the war in 1865, some 2,000 “Rains mines” had been built and deployed in the field around Richmond. Simultaneously, other Confederate officers and soldiers also developed a sundry of landmine varieties, including command controlled and victim activated, across the Confederacy.The Confederacy abandoned common practices in favor of innovative approaches that would help them overcome the significant deficits in materiel and manpower. The South’s reliance on these weapons pushed the limits of nineteenth century technology against a backdrop of a deteriorating military situation, setting off explosive debates inside the Confederate government and within the ranks of the army over the ethics of using “weapons that wait.” As the Confederacy’s fortune dissipated, its military leaders sought creative ways to fight, including leveraging low-cost weapons with minimal material inputs. This became an important factor in the increased support and attention landmines received from Confederate leaders. As the Civil War progressed, Southern military men continued to develop landmines with technological ingenuity adapted to local circumstances. Confederate soldiers manufactured landmines and also configured spur-of-the-moment landmines in a relatively ad hoc manner, often recycling unexploded Union ammunition. These debates over the ethics of mine warfare did not end in 1865.Dr. Rutherford, who is known worldwide for his decades of work in the landmine discipline, brings together primary and other research from archives, museums, and battlefields to demonstrate that the Civil War was the first military conflict in world history to see the widespread use of such weapons. His study contributes to the literature on one of the most fundamental, contentious, and significant modern conventional weapons. According to careful estimates, by the early 1990s, landmines were responsible for more than 26,000 deaths each year worldwide.America’s Buried History traces the development of landmines from their first use before the Civil War, to the early use of naval mines, through the establishment of the Confederacy’s Army Torpedo Bureau, the world’s first institution devoted to developing, producing, and fielding mines in warfare. As Dr. Rutherford demonstrates, landmines transitioned from “tools of cowards” and “offenses against democracy and civilized warfare” to an accepted form of warfare.

Long called by some the “Andersonville of the North,” the prisoner of war camp in Elmira, New York, is remembered as the most notorious of all Union-run POW camps. It existed for only a year—from the summer of 1864 to July 1865—but in that time, and for long after, it became darkly emblematic of man’s inhumanity to man. Confederate prisoners called it “Hellmira. ” Hastily constructed, poorly planned, and overcrowded, prisoner of war camps North and South were dumping grounds for the refuse of war. An unfortunate necessity, both sides regarded the camps as temporary inconveniences—and distractions from the important task of winning the war. There was no need, they believed, to construct expensive shelters or provide better rations. They needed only to sustain life long enough for the war to be won. Victory would deliver prisoners from their conditions. As a result, conditions in the prisoner of war camps amounted to a great humanitarian crisis, the extent of which could hardly be understood even after the blood stopped flowing on the battlefields. In the years after the war, as Reconstruction became increasingly bitter, the North pointed to Camp Sumter—better known as the Andersonville POW camp in Americus, Georgia—as evidence of the cruelty and barbarity of the Confederacy. The South, in turn, cited the camp in Elmira as a place where Union authorities withheld adequate food and shelter and purposefully caused thousands to suffer in the bitter cold. This finger-pointing by both sides would go on for over a century. And as it did, the legend of Hellmira grew. In Hellmira: The Union’s Most Infamous POW Camp of the Civil War, Derek Maxfield contextualizes the rise of prison camps during the Civil War, explores the failed exchange of prisoners, and tells the tale of the creation and evolution of the prison camp in Elmira. In the end, Maxfield suggests that it is time to move on from the blame game and see prisoner of war camps—North and South—as a great humanitarian failure.

On a rainy evening during the Civil War’s second May, President Abraham Lincoln and two of his cabinet secretaries boarded a treasury department ship to sail to Union-held Fort Monroe in Hampton Roads, Virginia. The trip resulted in the first and only time in the country’s history that a sitting president took direct control of military forces, both army and navy, to wage a campaign with wide-ranging consequences. This little-known slice of the war and its effect on the president is the subject of Steve Norder’s Lincoln Takes Command: The Campaign to Seize Norfolk and the Destruction of the CSS Virginia. For five days that May, Lincoln studied maps, suggested military actions and—in his quiet, respectful way—issued direct orders to subordinate commanders. Helped by movements farther up the Virginia peninsula, the president’s decisions resulted in a host of military actions and successes, including: a naval bombardment of a Confederate fort, the sailing of Union ships up the James River closer to the enemy capital, an amphibious landing of Union soldiers, the capture of Norfolk and the vital Portsmouth and Gosport navy yards, and the destruction of the Rebel ironclad CSS Virginia. Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln’s treasury secretary, described the actions as a “brilliant week’s campaign.” The president returned to Washington in triumph, hailed as a military and civilian leader. Indeed, some urged him to take direct command of the nation’s field armies.Norder’s years-long investigation draws upon a host of primary sources, including letters, diaries, official reports, and memoirs. This rich blending of material allows for a fresh perspective and interesting insights.Untold numbers of books have been penned about Abraham Lincoln, his presidency, and his struggles during the Civil War, but the fascinating week within the covers of Lincoln Takes Command—which helped shape him as a war president—has never has been told in such full detail. The successes that crowned his short time in Hampton Roads changed the nation’s commander in chief by giving him more of an understanding and confidence in his ability to see what needed to be accomplished, insight that sustained him through the rest of the war.

The sad plight of the Five Civilized Tribes—the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminole—during America’s Civil War is both fascinating and often overlooked in the literature. From 1861-1865, the Indians fought their own bloody civil war on lands surrounded by the Kansas Territory, Arkansas, and Texas. Clint Crowe’s magisterial Caught in the Maelstrom: The Indian Nations in the Civil War reveals the complexity and the importance of this war within a war, and explains how it affected the surrounding states in the Trans-Mississippi West and the course of the broader war engulfing the country. The onset of the Civil War exacerbated the divergent politics of the five tribes and resulted in the Choctaw and Chickasaw contributing men for the Confederacy and the Seminoles contributing men for the Union. The Creeks were divided between the Union and the Confederacy, while the internal war split apart the Cherokee nation mostly between those who followed Stand Watie, a brigadier general in the Confederate Army, and John Ross, who threw his majority support behind the Union cause. Throughout, Union and Confederate authorities played on divisions within the tribes to further their own strategic goals by enlisting men, signing treaties, encouraging bloodshed, and even using the hard hand of war to turn a profit. Crowe’s well-written study is grounded upon a plethora of archival resources, newspapers, diaries, letter collections, and other accounts. Caught in the Maelstrom examines every facet of this complex and fascinating story in a manner sure to please the most demanding reader.

This massive new reference work is broken up into sections presenting a detailed analysis of each corresponding order of battle for every German field formation above division. Additional new ground is broken by describing the orders of battle of the myriad German and Axis satellite formations assigned to security commands throughout occupied Europe and the combat zones, as well as those attached to fortress commands and to the commanders of German occupation forces in Eastern and Western Europe. An accompanying narrative describes the career of each field formation and includes the background and experience of many of their most famous commanding officers. Unlike similar works, these orders of battle are dynamic, and so account for the continuously changing character of Germany’s ground forces at war. For the first time, readers can follow the career of every German division, corps, army, and army group as the German armed forces shifted units to and from theatres of war, from the period of triumphant successes to the years of grinding defensive warfare and eventual defeat.

“Johnsonville” doesn’t mean much to most students of the Civil War. Yet, its contribution to the Union victory in the Western Theater is difficult to overstate, and its history is complex, fascinating, and heretofore mostly untold. Johnsonville: Union Supply Operations on the Tennessee River and the Battle of Johnsonville, November 4-5, 1864, by Jerry T. Wooten remedies that oversight with the first full-length treatment of this subject.Wooten, a former Park Manager at Johnsonville State Historic Park, unearthed a wealth of new material that sheds light on the creation and strategic role of the Union supply depot, the use of railroads and logistics, and its defense by U. S. Colored Troops. His study covers the emergence of a civilian town around the depot, and the roll all of this played in making possible the Union victories with which we are all familiar.This sterling monograph also includes the best and most detailed account of the Battle of Johnsonville. The fighting took place on the heels of one of the most audacious campaigns of the war, when Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest led his cavalry through western Tennessee on a 23-day raid. On November 4-5, 1864, Forrest’s troopers attacked the depot and shelled the city, destroying tons of invaluable supplies. The complex land-water operation nearly wiped out the Johnsonville supply depot, severely disrupted Gen. George Thomas’s army in Nashville, and impeded his operations against John Bell Hood’s Confederate army.Prior works on Johnsonville focus on Forrest’s operations, but Wooten’s deep original archival research peels back the decades to reveal significantly more on that battle as well as what life was like in and around the area for both military men and civilians. Civil War students thirst for original deeply researched studies on fresh topics. And that is exactly what Johnsonville: Union Supply Operations on the Tennessee River and the Battle of Johnsonville, November 4-5, 1864 provides them.

The National Tribune was the premier Union veterans’ newspaper of the post-Civil War era. Launched in 1877 by a New York veteran to help his comrades and sway Congress to pass better pension laws, a short time later the National Tribune began publishing firsthand accounts penned by the veterans themselves, and did so for decades thereafter. This rich, overlooked, and underused source of primary material offers a gold mine of eyewitness accounts of battles, strategy, tactics, camp life, and much more. From generals to privates, the paper printed articles and long serials on everything from major battles such as Gettysburg and Antietam, to arguments about which battery fired the shot that killed General Leonidas Polk, whether Grant’s army was surprised at Shiloh, and just about every topic in between. Unbeknownst to many, a number of Confederate accounts were also published in the paper.Decades in the making, Dr. Rick Sauers’ unique multi-volume reference work The National Tribune Civil War Index: A Guide to the Weekly Newspaper Dedicated to Civil War Veterans, 1877-1943 lists every article (1877-1943). The first two volumes are organized by author, his unit, title, and page/column location. The third volume—the main index—includes a subject, author, and unit guide, as well as a “Unit as Sources” index that lists articles that mention specific commands but are written by soldiers who were not members of that unit. As an added bonus, this reference guide includes the contents of both the National Tribune Scrapbook and the National Tribune Repository, two short-lived publications that included articles by veterans, and a listing of the major libraries that have National Tribune holdings.Thanks to Dr. Sauers, Civil War researchers and writers worldwide now have easy access to the valuable contents of this primary source material.

The National Tribune was the premier Union veterans’ newspaper of the post-Civil War era. Launched in 1877 by a New York veteran to help his comrades and sway Congress to pass better pension laws, a short time later the National Tribune began publishing firsthand accounts penned by the veterans themselves, and did so for decades thereafter. This rich, overlooked, and underused source of primary material offers a gold mine of eyewitness accounts of battles, strategy, tactics, camp life, and much more. From generals to privates, the paper printed articles and long serials on everything from major battles such as Gettysburg and Antietam, to arguments about which battery fired the shot that killed General Leonidas Polk, whether Grant’s army was surprised at Shiloh, and just about every topic in between. Unbeknownst to many, a number of Confederate accounts were also published in the paper.Decades in the making, Dr. Rick Sauers’ unique multi-volume reference work The National Tribune Civil War Index: A Guide to the Weekly Newspaper Dedicated to Civil War Veterans, 1877-1943 lists every article (1877-1943). The first two volumes are organized by author, his unit, title, and page/column location. The third volume—the main index—includes a subject, author, and unit guide, as well as a “Unit as Sources” index that lists articles that mention specific commands but are written by soldiers who were not members of that unit. As an added bonus, this reference guide includes the contents of both the National Tribune Scrapbook and the National Tribune Repository, two short-lived publications that included articles by veterans, and a listing of the major libraries that have National Tribune holdings.Thanks to Dr. Sauers, Civil War researchers and writers worldwide now have easy access to the valuable contents of this primary source material.

The National Tribune was the premier Union veterans’ newspaper of the post-Civil War era. Launched in 1877 by a New York veteran to help his comrades and sway Congress to pass better pension laws, a short time later the National Tribune began publishing firsthand accounts penned by the veterans themselves, and did so for decades thereafter. This rich, overlooked, and underused source of primary material offers a gold mine of eyewitness accounts of battles, strategy, tactics, camp life, and much more. From generals to privates, the paper printed articles and long serials on everything from major battles such as Gettysburg and Antietam, to arguments about which battery fired the shot that killed General Leonidas Polk, whether Grant’s army was surprised at Shiloh, and just about every topic in between. Unbeknownst to many, a number of Confederate accounts were also published in the paper.Decades in the making, Dr. Rick Sauers’ unique multi-volume reference work The National Tribune Civil War Index: A Guide to the Weekly Newspaper Dedicated to Civil War Veterans, 1877-1943 lists every article (1877-1943). The first two volumes are organized by author, his unit, title, and page/column location. The third volume—the main index—includes a subject, author, and unit guide, as well as a “Unit as Sources” index that lists articles that mention specific commands but are written by soldiers who were not members of that unit. As an added bonus, this reference guide includes the contents of both the National Tribune Scrapbook and the National Tribune Repository, two short-lived publications that included articles by veterans, and a listing of the major libraries that have National Tribune holdings.Thanks to Dr. Sauers, Civil War researchers and writers worldwide now have easy access to the valuable contents of this primary source material.

The 12th Virginia has an amazing history. John Wilkes Booth stood in the ranks of one of its future companies at John Brown’s hanging. The regiment refused to have Stonewall Jackson appointed its first colonel. Its men first saw combat in naval battles, including Hampton Roads and First Drewry’s Bluff, before embarrassing themselves at Seven Pines—their first land battle—just outside Richmond. Thereafter, the 12th’s record is one of hard-fighting from the Seven Days’ Battles all the way to Appomattox. Its remarkable story is told here in full for the first time in John Horn’s The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War: A History of the 12th Virginia Infantry from John Brown’s Hanging to Appomattox, 1859-1865.The Virginians of the 12th found themselves in some of the most pivotal battles of the war under Generals William Mahone and later, David Weisiger. After distinguishing themselves at Second Manassas, they were hit hard at Crampton’s Gap in the South Mountain fighting and were only able to field 25 men three days later at Sharpsburg. Good service at Chancellorsville followed. Its Gettysburg performance, however, tied to General Mahone’s mysterious behavior there, remains controversial. The Virginians played a key role in Longstreet’s flank attack at the Wilderness as well as in his near-fatal wounding, launched a bayonet charge at Spotsylvania, and captured their first enemy flag. The regiment truly came into its own during the nine-month siege of Petersburg, where it fought in a host of bloody battles including the Crater, Jerusalem Plank Road, Globe Tavern, Second Reams Station, Burgess Mill, and Hatcher’s Run. Two days before the surrender at Appomattox the regiment fought in the rear guard action at Cumberland Church—General Lee’s final victory of the war.Horn’s definitive history is grounded in decades of archival research that uncovered scores of previously unused accounts. The result is a lively, driving, up-tempo regimental history that not only describes the unit’s marches and battles, but includes personal glimpses into the lives of the Virginians who made up the 12th regiment. Tables compare the 12th’s fighting prowess with friend and foe, and an appendix resolves the lingering controversy over the fate of the regiment’s last battle flag.With thirty-two original maps, numerous photos, diagrams, tables, and appendices, a glossary, and many explanatory footnotes, The Petersburg Regiment in the Civil War will long be hailed as one of the finest regimental histories ever penned.

Countless books have examined the battle of Gettysburg, but the retreat of the armies to the Potomac River and beyond has not been as thoroughly covered. “Lee is Trapped, and Must be Taken”: Eleven Fateful Days after Gettysburg: July 4 to July 14, 1863, by Thomas J. Ryan and Richard R. Schaus goes a long way toward rectifying this oversight.This comprehensive study focuses on the immediate aftermath of the battle and addresses how Maj. Gen. George G. Meade organized and motivated his Army of the Potomac in response to President Abraham Lincoln’s mandate to bring about the “literal or substantial destruction” of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s retreating Army of Northern Virginia. As far as the president was concerned, if Meade aggressively pursued and confronted Lee before he could escape across the flooded Potomac River, “the rebellion would be over.”The long and bloody three-day battle exhausted both armies. Their respective commanders faced difficult tasks, including the rallying of their troops for more marching and fighting. Lee had to keep his army organized and motivated enough to conduct an orderly withdrawal away from the field. Meade faced the same organizational and motivational challenges, while assessing the condition of his victorious but heavily damaged army, to determine if it had sufficient strength to pursue and crush a still-dangerous enemy. Central to the respective commanders’ decisions was the information they received from their intelligence-gathering resources about the movements, intentions, and capability of the enemy. The eleven-day period after Gettysburg was a battle of wits to determine which commander better understood the information he received, and directed the movements of his army accordingly. Prepare for some surprising revelations.Woven into this account is the fate of thousands of Union prisoners who envisioned rescue to avoid incarceration in wretched Confederate prisons, and a characterization of how the Union and Confederate media portrayed the ongoing conflict for consumption on the home front.The authors utilized a host of primary sources to craft their study, including letters, memoirs, diaries, official reports, newspapers, and telegrams, and have threaded these intelligence gems in an exciting and fast-paced narrative that includes a significant amount of new information. “Lee is Trapped, and Must be Taken” is a sequel to Thomas Ryan’s Spies, Scouts, and Secrets in the Gettysburg Campaign, the recipient of the Bachelder-Coddington Literary Award and Gettysburg Civil War Round Table Distinguished Book Award.

Want to maximize your time in the United States Air Force? Want to know what it really takes to be successful while serving your country? Ever just want someone to keep it real on the topics that mean the most to you? A.J. Kehl, a Senior Master Sergeant (SMSgt) in the U.S. Air Force, does just that and more in My Rich Uncle: An Informal Guide to Maximizing Your Enlistment in the United States Air Force.Kehl’s well-crafted guide is designed with one purpose in mind: To make sure you make the most out of your time in the armed forces. Sgt. Kehl distinguishes his book from any other you will read, pointing out all the important things that rarely, if ever, make it to print. Hot items such as promotion, leadership, networking, and traveling make this a must-read for anyone now on active duty, thinking of joining the military, or who has spent time within this unique lifestyle.My Rich Uncle includes an invaluable collection of knowledge, wisdom, and insight from numerous USAF leaders, all of which is geared toward helping fellow airmen find success in their careers by highlighting the cultural things we expect airmen to know, or at least figure out, but which are rarely taught. This book will help you successfully navigate an Air Force career by providing insight into the expectations and the steps for YOU to take in order to maximize your service time and set yourself up for success. It also highlights little known programs, like Air Force Lean and Continuous Process Improvement, that empower airmen to find root cause solutions and reduce time-wasting practices that do not further your career.My Rich Uncle: An Informal Guide to Maximizing Your Enlistment in the United States Air Force is written by an airman for men and women who want to get the most out of their service.

“I didn’t realize there was another ‘hermit’ of Walden Pond!” is the usual response author-historian Terry Barkley receives when he tells someone the subject of his new book. Henry David Thoreau’s experiment there from 1845-1847 is widely known and immortalized in his classic Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854). However, stresses Barkley, “Neither the world nor even most avid Thoreauvians know about Edmond Hotham’s six-months at Walden Pond during the winter of 1868-1869,” the fascinating story of which is detailed in The Other “Hermit” of Thoreau’s Walden Pond: The Sojourn of Edmond Stuart Hotham. A generation later and nearly seven years after Henry Thoreau died in 1862 of tuberculosis in Concord, Massachusetts, a young theological student from New York City arrived in Concord in November 1868. Edmond Hotham had never been there, but he immediately began preparations to pursue the “wild life.” He met transcendentalist poet (William) Ellery Channing, a former close friend of Thoreau’s who had suggested to Thoreau that he build his cabin at Walden Pond. It was Channing who likely introduced Hotham to transcendentalist leader Ralph Waldo Emerson (the “Sage of Concord”), and Emerson who gave Hotham permission, like Thoreau before him, to build his “Earth-cabin” on the poet’s property at Walden Pond. Edmond Hotham’s sojourn at Walden Pond was the first and only time someone traveled to Walden Pond to emulate Thoreau’s experiment in simplicity. Hotham made his way to Walden Pond to pursue some “private business” while he was preparing for Christian ministry and stateside missionary work. He built his shanty on the pond’s shore about 100 yards in front of Thoreau’s, where he attempted to out-economize and out-simplify Thoreau. Hotham’s sojourn as the second “hermit” at Walden Pond exemplified the growing adulation of Henry David Thoreau and his literary work. Author Terry Barkley has gleaned archival sources, vital records, period newspaper accounts, and census rolls for everything that is known about Edmond Hotham.The Other “Hermit” of Thoreau’s Walden Pond is the first book-length treatise on Hotham, half of which is wholly new material. It far supersedes the late Kenneth Walter Cameron’s 1962 article on Hotham, which until now was the most complete study of the man. Barkley’s groundbreaking study book is an important addition to the Concord-Walden Pond story and a fascinating read. To quote Thoreau, “What is once well done is done forever.”

Are you satisfied with the current state of public discourse? The almost unanimous response from people across the nation is a loud and emphatic “No!”The reply is always the same regardless of politics. Today’s public discourse typically starts with a “conclusion” and goes downhill from there. If there are talking heads, argument begins instantly and typically runs in circles. This is a dangerous path for a society that depends upon civility and virtue to survive. The Tyranny of Public Discourse: Abraham Lincoln’s Six-Element Antidote for Meaningful and Persuasive Writing by scholars David Hirsch and Dan Van Haften addresses what is one of the most important issues of our time.This book can teach anyone how to use logic and reason to create persuasive writing. A byproduct of this is the civility that will ensue with an elevated public discourse. The Tyranny of Public Discourse establishes the six elements of a proposition as a verbal form of the scientific method—something Abraham Lincoln knew and used routinely. His logic and reason is so well known that it is quoted today more than 150 years after his death. Learning the six elements and how to use them to discuss any topic at any time is not only fascinating, but fairly easy to understand and implement. This book sets it all out, step-by-step and color coded, from beginning to end.The Tyranny of Public Discourse: Abraham Lincoln’s Six-Element Antidote for Meaningful and Persuasive Writing, complete with 21 diagrams on how to structure your logic, is the book you have been waiting for. The time is short, and the hour is now.

The importance of Robert E. Lee’s first movement north of the Potomac River in September 1862 is difficult to overstate. After his string of successes in Virginia, a decisive Confederate victory in Maryland or Pennsylvania may well have spun the war in an entirely different direction. Why he and his Virginia army did not find success across the Potomac was due in large measure to the generalship of George B. McClellan, as Steven Stotelmyer ably demonstrates in Too Useful to Sacrifice: Reconsidering George B. McClellan’s Generalship in the Maryland Campaign from South Mountain to Antietam.Although typecast as the slow and overly cautious general who allowed Lee’s battered army to escape, in fact, argues Stotelmyer, General McClellan deserves significant credit for defeating and turning back the South’s most able general. He does so through five comprehensive chapters, each dedicated to a specific major issue of the campaign:Fallacies Regarding the Lost OrdersAll the Injury Possible: The Day between South Mountain and AntietamAntietam: The Sequel to South MountainGeneral John Pope at Antietam and the Politics behind the Myth of the Unused ReservesSupplies and Demands: The Demise of General George B. McClellanWas McClellan’s response to the discovery of Lee’s Lost Orders really as slow and inept as we have been led to believe? Although routinely dismissed as a small prelude to the main event at Antietam, was the fighting on South Mountain the real Confederate high tide in Maryland? Is the criticism leveled against McClellan for not rapidly pursuing Lee’s army after the victory on South Mountain warranted? Did McClellan fail to make good use of his reserves in the bloody fighting on September 17? Finally, what is the real story behind McClellan’s apparent “failure” to pursue the defeated Confederate army after Antietam, which triggered President Lincoln’s frustration with him and resulted in his removal?Utilizing extensive primary documents and with a keen appreciation for the infrastructure of the nineteenth century Maryland terrain, Stotelmyer deeply explores these longheld beliefs, revealing that often the influence of political considerations dictated military decisionmaking, and the deliberate actions of the Lincoln Administration behind McClellan’s back resulted in bringing about many of the general’s supposed shortcomings. As readers will soon discover, Lincoln did not need to continue searching for a capable commander; he already had one.

Gettysburg: Kids Who Did the Impossible! is a creative, visually-captivating experience for children, young historians, and Civil War enthusiasts alike. Gettysburg was one of the most important battles of the entire Civil War, and author Gregory Christianson brings it to life through breathtaking photographs, extraordinary watercolors, and exciting true-to-life stories. This is the perfect platform for “story guides” Liam and Jaden to celebrate Gettysburg’s young heroes—kids who defied age and inexperience to serve their town, country, and fellow human beings far beyond common valor. This remarkable and wholly unique presentation has something for everyone: single-page introductions for each day of the battle and lots of “have-to-know” facts, all wrapped in a photographic essay of the Gettysburg battlefield as you’ve never seen before.